- + Can I, and should I, secretly capture visitors’ email addresses from my website?
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No, and your prospects are grateful for that.
- + Do prospects want privacy online?
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Yes, and it’s essential in making them comfortable enough to spend time exploring your website. Tell them that they are not being monitored, and mean it. (We back you up by posting a friendly but explicit privacy notice for you.)
- + Should I target my prospects with mass email?
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Very carefully, and after reading our philosophy. The risk is that as few as 0.5% of mass emails may be read, vs. upwards of 95% of a large postcard mailing.
Choosing whether to mass-email also depends on your organization, its size, and its constituency. If you are a small local organization such as a theatre or a church, your members and friends will likely welcome your emails. If you are a large organization, you will probably encounter countless different temperaments on your list.
We lead the industry in research and analysis of email marketing. We’ve learned techniques that improve readership rates: in our own mailings, for instance, we use an individualized mail-merge instead of a bulk-sender, to eliminate spam. It’s more costly, but the results are worth it. We also avoid headers and footers since most email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook) ’’break’’ them for security and privacy reasons.
- + Why are donor stories important?
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Donor stories motivate others to give, and generate second-time gifts. Imagine the emotional impact of a heartfelt story featuring a donor who was able to make a significant gift without affecting his or her finances! Or imagine showcasing a donor who supported your mission, while at the same time gained financial or tax benefits. A real-life story illustrates the effectiveness of planned giving in ways that a technical gift detail never can.
- + Which level of website should we choose?
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It depends on how much information you want on your website. As you move from our Basic Level to the Advanced and to the Pro Plus, you gain more content and more interactive features.
If you need a basic marketing tool, our Basic Level will do the job well. If you’d like a little more interactivity, try the Advanced Level. If you need to educate and engage sophisticated prospects and their advisors, the Pro Plus level is the way to go. Pro Plus is filled with detailed gift descriptions that you can email to prospects for instant follow-up, instead of mailing expensive brochures. Interactivity? The most compelling of any commercial or in-house Web pages.
So ask yourself: What do you want to use your planned giving website for? Marketing? Educating prospects? Financial advisors? Disseminating information by sending out links? Providing prospects with an interactive guide to decision-making? Each non-profit has its own goals. Even if your budget allows for a Pro Plus, it may be that our Basic Level is all you need.
- + My budget is tight. Can you help?
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Our services begin at $995 per year, which includes a comprehensive, industry-leading planned giving website. That works out to just about $2.72 a day – less than a cup of cappuccino at your local coffee shop. And we offer flexible payment terms – just ask.
- + Do you stay current with tax-law changes?
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Yes, updates are made automatically, so you need never worry that your site is out of date. We also stay current with changes in the rates that affect life-income gift calculations. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to provide the most complete and accurate websites possible. (Some providers avoid illustrating changeable rates, because of the effort required to maintain accuracy.)
- + Your client list is impressive! But I’m just a small shop – will I get the same attention?
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Thanks, we think it’s an impressive list, too... and we do showcase many of the leading non-profits in the nation (hey, it’s an ego thing – what can we say?).
However, half of our clients are small to medium sized non-profits. All told, our clients have budgets ranging in size from less than $1 million to over $2 billion a year. We get to know every client’s needs and preferences personally, and we maintain vigilant quality control across the board. See our testimonials page.
- + Why bother with a planned giving website?
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The Internet is a new, novel medium that engages visitors to explore and learn. Seniors are embracing it as a trusted source of information and communication. Even more compelling: for many in the generation of donors coming behind today’s seniors, if the information does not exist online, it does not exist, period. When prospects visit your planned giving site, it’s on their own time, when they are most receptive to learning about creative ways to support you. A planned giving website is also an excellent medium to showcase your donors.
As your prospects become increasingly Web-proficient, you need to take advantage of the tool that can expand your marketing reach, increase your gift activity, and help you close more and larger gifts.
- + Are my prospects actually using the Internet?
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Absolutely. U.S. seniors use the Internet more than their younger counterparts and are the fastest growing sector of the PC-purchasing public. They also hold the majority of the wealth in the U.S. and are your main market. As they migrate to the Net, you should be there to meet them there.
The article titled Seniors and the Online Revolution is a must read on our resources page.
- + How can I increase traffic to my website?
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We have a comprehensive answer, broken down into useful action points for our clients. We’ve studied and researched this question since our founding. Partner with us for the information!
- + Can I count on prospects finding our planned giving website through search engines?
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Search engine registration should be on your list, but it shouldn’t be your top priority. Most people do not know how to search the Internet proficiently, and a general search term such as planned giving can easily locate tens of thousands of pages, many of them irrelevant to your prospects. We have consistently found that prospects go to planned giving pages through an advertised URL.
Also, visit our resources page and read Web Stats – Understanding Them.
- + Should we use "fake" donors like some other non-profits?
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Since our websites are customized, you have the flexibility to showcase your own donors, their own stories, and their reasons why they support you. We urge you to do so.
Why use a composite story when you can feature a real-life donor to your organization, with an original story to tell? We’ve seen over 400 planned giving websites with the same stories! Those donors are either very generous, or someone is using stock photography and canned stories. As a matter of fact, we’ve seen these same faces advertising healthcare products on billboards.
We help 97 out of every 100 clients post their own donor profiles online. However, we do have canned stories you can use temporarily if you are in a bind.
- + We don’t even have a general fundraising site. Why bother with a planned giving website?
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Don’t put off the benefits of marketing to your most motivated prospects. Put your planned giving web site up now, and incorporate it into an overall fundraising site when that’s ready to go live. Having a presence on the Internet will give you exposure to a medium that has become integrated into the daily life of your prospects.
